50 Comments

The are a LOT of interesting things about this mod but unfortunately the faults overshadow them. A mod of this style will generally polarize the players; half will love the dark setting and the other half, myself included, won’t be so happy.

Dark maps and mods rarely live up to the atmosphere they hope to create and this mod is no different in that aspect. I never felt scared or even if the levels had a lot of atmosphere.

This mod reminds me of Forward Motion because it’s made by one person and it’s quite long. Also both mods would have benefited from more testing and, more importantly, more thought during development. Size doesn’t always matter. There are far too many errors in the mapping to ignore. Images 13 and 25 were taken when I fell through the floor. They were very easy to reach too.

Putting those aspects aside, the author clearly has some talent that should be developed in an experienced team environment rather than being just left to flow freely. I mean that if he was part of a team that made high quality maps I am sure he would develop into a great modder.

The mod itself has little story and the maps are unconnected. The problem he is that I nearly lost my motivation to continue because without some reason to continue I get bored quickly.

I guess that most PP readers will use the Play It Later recommendation image but I am sticking to Consider It image because unless you like dark maps then this mod is unlikely to provide you with a lot of fun.

In retrospect, I think the amount of gameplay, not just the amount of time I spent playing it, was quite small. I would have preferred if this mod was reduced in size, had a proper story and each level received the attention to detail and testing it deserved.

I like dark maps. Dark World? Even name is enough to get me excited. Generally I like this mod, but like Phillip mentioned, it needs some more testing and some more development. For someone like me who tries to see every single bit of art in a game and mod, lack of beta testing is big problem because I usually end up in weird places that I’m not supposed to be in. But still I like this mod. It was good enough to keep me excited to the end.If you like dark ambiences, you’ll like this one, if you don’t you can still try it, but don’t expect much.

On first play through it is a little scary. On second play through the lack of game play makes it boring.
The author is up front about the mod (a tenuously connected set of maps in reality) and says it is about atmosphere rather than game play. If that is your thing and you like dark maps you’ll probably enjoy it.
The quality of mapping/modding is a little on the poor side – see previous comments.
The wife loves it. As phillip says “A mod of this style will generally polarize the players; half will love the dark setting and the other half, myself included, won’t be so happy”
All that said, there is a dearth of half decent maps/mods at the moment so it might be something to do while we wait for SM and, hopefully, others.

While far from being a “good” mod I did enjoy parts it and hope the author has learned something from this and goes onto better things.I too found it very dark and got myself lost a few times since there was nothing indicating where to go.Worth the download.

The dark maps are the best. I haven’t gotten a chance to try this one out yet but I will this weekend. It looks pretty intense and it looks a bit different from the last few. I’m looking forward to it. Regards!

Nothing can be excused here; The author surely has some ideas, but what works with his pictures doesn’t work with this mod (abstract art) – I guess it would have worked if he would have used textures similar to his paintings, but so you can just close your eyes assume a foetal position and wish this never happened.

What can you expect::

atrocious brushwork
no story
no sense of progress
a key, that doesn’t look like a key
maps with holes
mountain with the nodraw texture
cut scenes while standing in the middle of a trigger hurt
cut scenes while the enemy attacks you.
arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (no I don’t mean pirates)

While I appreciate the effort that went into this – and there’s a huge amount of work that deserves plaudits – this is nevertheless one of the worst mods I have ever played. Struck by terminal boredom, I could not continue, and especially not with the Kleiner Special Issue Flashlight [[note to Kleiner: if you can build teleporters, wassup wid dis hunh?]]. Tacky map construction with gaps and numerous places to get stuck or fall off the world, dull long scenes where nothing happens, unchallenging fights, tedious darkness and that darn flashlight (again!), etc. etc.

Have to say though that I loved the Mayan temple. The one bright spot. I turned off the flashlight.

So, keep trying, but you need to clean up your act re. mapping, and you need to thnik a lot more about pacing.

I didnt expect it to be a realy good game.
since this is my first mod and because I did this on my own to get some expierence in building maps.
I just had really fun making it and it costed me a lot of time but I think I made progress in level design and gonna continue doin it. I hope some people will see through the beginner faults and have a good time playing it.
I think next I will focuse on hl ep2.

Hi InfectedHL, thanks for dropping by. I understand what you mean about getting experience but as I have said before I believe you should have made something smaller and then got feedback, then made something else and so on.

The analogy I used in the past is that you have tried to write a novel before you have even written some short stories.

Some of the issues are not really related to “beginner faults” but to do with quality control and ideas. Keep building maps and we’ll play them and hopefully each one will get better and better..

I agree, I made a vew smaller things in the past just for fun some maps for css my friends all liked the maps but probably becouse they know how dificult it can be. I wanted to make a mod but yes maybe it was to early for that.
well gues its time to let go and start somethin new.

By quality control I really mean beta testing. Having holes in maps shouldn’t be about being a beginner, unless they are very strange ones, it’s about making sure that everything you do is of the highest quality, that includes holes in the maps etc.

If you look at the maps and mods that are considered the best of thebest most of them are smaller than yours. WHil;st size isn’t the most important part, making smoehting very large AND of very high quality takes a group of modders years, so one person simply can’t do it. Foster took a very long time to make Minerva, and that was released in parts.

Help — I played this through some way yesterday, and tried to continue this evening – but it won’t load!

I tried deleting the the file in steam and replacing it with a newly unzipped file, still won’t load.

What I get is music and a hatched screen with a small text message at the top that says “vids:H264 not found”.

Anybody know what that’s about? Please!

As to the mod – I was quite enjoying it, although I have to say that being so dark, and having to use the torch all the time becomes a little tedious, I feel sure that the same maps would not be so different with a little ambient light.

Phil

Edit by andyb:Fixed post

That is my comment above – I don’t know why I am anon. – but I ‘ve just logged in again, Took me a long time to do

Phillip – of late your site seems very slow to respond to page changes – it may be my machine, but I don’t think so.

Well I can tell you got better at making a outline and overlay of a map as the game progressed, really nice, some areas were superb in atmosphere, others we’re more filler and *glitchy* to say the least, but thats not to put down the mod, it was a nice length, I liked it a lot :p keep up the mapping you have a lot of potential to make a really good single player game.

thx a lot.
Although not everyone liked it. But I gues its just for a small kind of people with a dark soul and I just started making maps a year ago. Im glad I could finnish something here. And gained expierence.
ill try to make my next Horror mod with better quallity and in hl2 episode 2 engine.
btw People who are having the video error: delete the intro.avi and startupvids.txt in sourcemods\dark world\media folder and run the game again.

If you only started making maps a year agao then I believe you have done a fantastic job, well done. My critisim is not so much about the technical apsects but the choices you made with the design and its process. Clearly you have talent and hopefully this whole project will increase your motivation to create soemthing that will be considered excellent by most readers. Good luck!

I can’t really even rate this mod, as I’ve given up after wandering around in the dark at the beginning for almost 30 minutes.

I followed walls, wandered around, whacked at some wood, wandered around, hit an invisible wall, wandered around…. wash, rinse, repeat. I might give it another go later, but I don’t really need a HalfLife mod to tell me wandering around in the dark isn’t any fun.

I dont know, mapzeven here just freezes and bye. When the music starts playing. None the less, I like that. I think its a little better than that Ravenholm mod made some years ago. Specially liked the halucinogen gas scene, or whatever that was. Vision all wired.

Help, I am lost in the bendy bit where every thing gets distorted, cant find a way out. Hate this sequence, found the game ok up to this point but getting close to giving up. I may skip round this part, anyone know the name for the next map?

In the house, go up the stairs, walk around the balcony, go through the toilet room.
in the right corner in the back theres a hatch in the floor. go through and use the gravity gun the metal hatch in room you will come out. go through te halway, go up the ladder. in the erea you will come out there will be a window you can break on the factory wall. use a box to reach it. et voila!

OK, thanx for the help in getting me out of the junkyard. But after I got out of the lift that goes down and I’m in the big room with the hanging creatures and the fast zombies
I go into the room and everything goes white. Can’t see a thing. What’s with that? I beginnig to think that the intention of this map is to piss a player off. For god’s sake what’s next? OK, what I am I to do or what is suppose to happen?

I think there may be a glich at that point of the map. I went back into it yesterday and everything was fine. I have advanced to a couple of different areas since, so I’m OK. Thanx for the help anyway.

The best thing of the mod was the atmosphere, but it wasn’t durable during the game. Also there was some quite nice brushwork and the music fit also well.
The gameplay was pretty boring, except some fights.
And really the whole mod was ever the same, there was no real story and it was totally annoying to get sended by the vortigaunt from area to area to area.
And here we have the biggest mistake the modder made: He just took all his ideas and pressed them in a single mod, without any sense behind it. It’s a bit like a waste, especially because there are some really nice ideas I wished to see properly made.
Had no problem with the dark theme, But there should have been a bit more weak lights, totally darkness doesn’t look good either.

Well, I disagree with all the harsh comments about this mod. I wish I had half the patience and talent to develop such a “crappy” mod completely on my own.
My only suggestion would be to provide a walkthrough for some of the trickier parts. That having been said, I’ve paid for games with much more frustrating parts than this (Call of Cthulhu, anyone? I’m still stuck in that game, even in God Mode).
I was very impressed with the variety of levels, and cool music throughout. Your gallery at the end was a very nice touch.

I haven’t completed this yet, but from I think the pyramid part it’s freakin’ boss! It has excellent original(?) music, I actually have “track mapfour” on my Youtube channel, awesome horror stuff, awful grammar! But the gameplay and everything else is superb!!!!!